By PRA Rebeka A. Bamgboye
The weight of defeat that I felt in my stomach when my first chemical reaction failed was a brutal awakening to what research truly entailed. I had just started in my organic chemistry lab a few weeks ago, and this was my first attempt at doing something independently. After taking my time to monitor my chemical reaction and an even longer time to purify my chemical compound, I was naively expecting the results to reflect my efforts.
It took about five more failed chemical reactions for me to start utilizing my failures rather than resenting them with these following mindset changes:
- This is research, not class.
In class, you learn information that has already been discovered. Your only job is to know and understand the scope of what you are taught. In research, however, you are working to discover new knowledge. In any field, the expansion of knowledge, is not straight forward. At any given time, things can take unexpected turns, and your results may not reflect what you had hoped for or hypothesized, regardless of human error. Unlike performance in class, failures in research are not necessarily indicative of the skill of the researcher but are opportunities to learn more about your topic/field and expand your research question. It is important to distinguish your research from school. Remember this formula:
School: Good Performance = Good Grades
Research: Good Performance = Who Knows?
- Analyze your failures.
Along with recognizing that failing is inevitable in research, be prepared to analyze your failures thoroughly. As uncomfortable as it may be, analyzing your failures is truly the key to utilizing them effectively. Retrace your steps. Review your procedures. Reread the literature. Relook at similar research studies. Ask your PI and mentors for insight before moving forward. Through this process, you would not only learn more about your specific field, but you would also gain a deeper understanding of the research process in general.
- Failure is not a waste of time.
Having the mentality that failing is a waste of time may prevent you from acquiring the insight that could be gained when you fail. Treating failure as a mere inconvenience may cause you to unknowingly reject the opportunity to grow from that experience. Viewing failure as wasted effort would make it just that: a waste of effort. Failure is not a waste of time; it is an important aspect of research.
Final Words
Learning how to fail is a skill that I wish I had learned sooner. As painful as it may be to put effort into a project only for it to fall short of your expectations, failure gives you the opportunity to grow as a researcher. So, don’t be discouraged; the effort you put into research is worth it!
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